Familiar
by Phoenix Stone
Summary: A/O Benson gets called in early Sunday morning to one of the worst cases of abuse and neglect she's ever seen. Stabler and Cragen are powerless as she gets way too invested in the case. A/O challenge within.
1. Chapter 1

Ok, so here's another A/O for you. This is more in the spirit of an actual episode, so it's a little more fast-paced than my other stuff. I've been wanting to do this story for a while, but it's been hard sorting it out. The characters herein which do not belong to Dick Wolf, are copyrighted to me. That means they can not be used in any way without my permission. I've actually taken characters from my novel and had them do a little guest star, mainly because this is what I do to help get in their heads. Any reviews will be lovely, especially critiques.

You'll notice the beginning sounds more like a middle. I'm putting out a **challenge** to anyone who wants to write an A/O one- or two-shot which contains all the events leading up to this point. In particular, Alex and Liv's first kiss. My only rules are that you make sure it is complicated and awkward in a few places, and it must be in Benson's POV. Rated T or M, but tasteful. I'm not sure if anyone will answer this challenge, but if you want to, note me with a link to your story. The one I like the best will be put at the bottom of this long, egotistical A/N and all will be held at gunpoint and made to read it before they read the rest of this story. Furthermore, if anyone wants to do a sister story in Cabot's POV, go for it. Note me and if I like it I'll also add that to this bullshit.

I'm shutting up now. Love to the lovers.

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I smiled quietly at her and tried to think of something to say. Nothing came to mind fast enough and I, foolishly, kissed ADA Alexandra Cabot.

I had never experienced anything like it. And I don't mean because it was my first time kissing a woman, because in reality it wasn't. I'd ended up in bed with a girl in college once, but hadn't thought much of it besides that I never wanted to get that drunk again. Alex became so _intense_, almost possessive, after I kissed her. I had to throw her off me and tell her to cool it more times than I ever had to do with any man. The whole time, I was still unsure about what was happening -- I absolutely did not want to end up in bed with her. We needed to talk about it, see where we stood, what the rules would be about work. But in the end, she was so goddamn intoxicating. She found places on my body I didn't even know could respond like that -- strange places -- my shoulder, the inside of my arm, my ankle.

I woke up at about 4am and felt her shivering in the bed beside me. I always got hot at night, and so I only kept a sheet on my bed. She'd crashed at my place now and then when she didn't feel sober enough to go home, so I knew a little about her sleeping habits, that she got cold at night, and felt bad that I hadn't gotten her an extra blanket. Then again, I hadn't really planned on her ending up naked in my bed. I hadn't planned any of this, which is why I didn't do the obvious thing and snuggle up to her and warm her up. I snuck carefully out of bed and went to the couch, got the afghan and draped it over her. She grabbed it and pulled it tighter around her, mumbling something incoherent. By the time I got back in bed, she had heaved a big sigh and her muscles began to relax.

My cell phone woke me again at 8; It was Elliot, he apologized for waking me but said they'd gotten a call about a case and he needed me.

"Elliot, it's Sunday," I whined quietly. I didn't actually care, I was just giving him a hard time.

He didn't take the bait. "Liv, you're going to want to see this," he said soberly.

"I'll be right in." I shut my phone and turned around to wake Alex, but she was gone. Her side of the bed was made up, the afghan had been folded and returned to the couch. I was used to her sneaking out early in the morning like this. I knew she would have taken my key to lock up and then shoved it under the door. I knew she went running every morning at 6 or 7. I knew this, but for some reason finding her missing from my apartment without having said goodbye on this particular morning made me feel like shit.

In my car, Elliot called me again. "I'm on my way." I said as I answered.

"Change of plans," was his reply. "Meet me at Mercy."

I tied with him and an ambulance as I pulled up to the ER. Munch and Fin were already there. "Is that our vic?" I asked as I walked over to them. They were rolling someone out of the ambulance on a stretcher.

"Yes," Elliot nodded sternly, "Also maybe the perp."

Fin jumped in, walking me through it. "Mailman walks to the porch to find two young girls, bloody, half dressed; and one man, bloody, also half dressed. Guess which half."

"One of them fought back?"

"You could say that." Munch continued. "Or you could say she beat the guy in the face and crotch so hard they've decided to raise him as a girl." I grimaced. That made the case incredibly complicated.

"That's not all." Elliot said, shaking his head. "Something's off-kilter about these girls, Liv. Look."

I looked again. A young girl jumped out of the back of a second ambulance, swearing, covered in blood. "That," Elliot said into my ear, "is vic-slash-perp number two." He turned his face and revealed a nice purple bruise on the side of his jaw.

"She hit you?"

He made a face that said everything. In order not to laugh at him I had to put my energy into wondering what would make a child so violent. I turned back to the ambulance. Two EMTs were restraining the girl. Five more had emerged from the hospital and were buzzing around a second stretcher. This one quite obviously had a kid on it. "That's the other kid. She didn't fight back." Elliot told me as I began to run towards the EMT's with the first girl.

"I got her." I said. "I got her, let her go. Put her down." Up close I found out just how young she was. "It's okay, it's okay. No one is going to hurt you."

"Hurt me!?" She snapped. "What about my sister?" She was actually shaking with rage. "That BASTARD, I'm going to kill him." I caught her as she took off towards the doors to the ER, and immediately had to dodge a hard right hook. She couldn't have been more than twelve. There was no reason why she should have known how to fight like that.

"Calm down," I was saying, trying to buy time while the other stretchers disappeared. Once they were a safe distance away, I switched directions. "Alright, come on. Let's go inside and sit down."

She confused me when she put on the breaks and suddenly appeared afraid to go into the place she had just been scrambling towards. "I'm not going anywhere with you." She said vehemently, still struggling against my grip. "I don't know you."

"I'm a police officer. My name is Olivia. We need to get you inside the hospital so the doctors can look at you."

"I never said I was hurt." At least she had stopped fighting me physically.

I resisted the urge to call her 'sweetie.' She wasn't the "sweetie" type. "Where did all the blood on you come from?" I asked as gently as I could.

Her face fell into a strange bewildered expression, and she looked down at herself, took in a sharp breath and immediately passed out. I caught her and ran her into the hospital.

Stabler and I had waited outside their hospital rooms for less than five minutes when a young man came running up to us.

"Where is she?" He said. "Is she okay?"

"Slow down," Elliot replied. "Who are you?"

"Robert Manfield." He was still trying to get around us. "They said they brought in my sister_. _Why are you two here? What did he do to her?"

I looked at him. "Someone tell you we were from SVU?"

"Didn't have to. I remember him from when I was a kid." Stabler studied the young man, who answered him. "You knew my dad. William Manfield, from the K9 unit." Elliot nodded, recognizing him, but it wasn't time for reunions. "What happened to my sister?"

I spoke up. "We need you to tell us what your sister looks like." I had to verify that he was who he said he was.

"She's eleven. Her name is Jay, she has long brown hair, green eyes like mine. She's about this tall." He indicated with a flat palm.

"Okay. We don't really know what happened, we haven't been able to talk to her. She came in with a lot of blood on her, but we don't know if it's hers. They're looking her over to see if she's hurt."

"Oh, God." He paled and swallowed hard, taking two or three steps backwards.

Elliot stepped forward. "She came in with a man and another little girl. Do you have any idea who they would be?"

"She was calling the girl her sister. Do you have two sisters?" I added.

"No." He said, confused. "No, there's four of us, but Jay's the only girl."

"Do you have any idea why she would be calling that girl her sister? Maybe a friend of hers?"

"No, no. Jay doesn't make friends with other girls. She's too rough, she'd rather play football than dress-up."

"Okay," Elliot said. "Do you know who the guy is?"

"Without even looking. It's Nick Sheffield. Our step-dad." He put his head into his hands. "I knew this would happen. I never should have left."

Elliot grabbed his shoulder in a very paternal gesture. "Let's go talk at the precinct."

A doctor found me as they walked out. The girl's x-rays showed signs of severe abuse. A healed jaw, cheekbone, wrist, rib, collarbone. None had been reported. "What about the rape kit?" I asked.

"Positive for fluids, and signs this wasn't the first time it happened." I raised my eyebrows and she answered, "her Hymen was broken a long time ago."

"Is she awake?"

"No, I sedated her for the exam, so she'll be out for a while."

"How long before the mother gets here?"

"She's in another state on business. Catching the next flight in puts her on our doorstep in 8-10 hours." She sighed and then turned to me and said, "I have a feeling you're going to want to get your psychiatrist down here."

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I met Huang in the children's ward. He was looking through the glass observing the second little girl in the play room. She'd been found to have no injuries beside a cut on her head, bruise to her abdomen and some little scrapes here and there. The doctor's main concern had been how dirty she was, and how small. They found ulcers on her skin from not washing, her teeth were a mess, and she was extremely thin. Munch and Fin had gone back to the precinct with her photograph to try and i.d. her. I joined Huang, watching the girl, and it didn't take long to see why he was brought in. She was behaving very strangely. Like everything frightened her, she would hide under the table for a second, then come out, seemed to gauge weather she could climb the bookshelf to the window, then look for someplace else to hide. She tried repeatedly to crawl under the sofa. The light seemed to hurt her eyes, and she never once stood up on two feet.

"I've never seen anything like this," Huang said quietly as we watched her. "I mean I've read about it, but never thought I'd see this in the United States, it's..." He shook his head.

"What's wrong with her?" I asked.

He turned to me and his expression couldn't have begun to warn me. "That little girl is completely feral."


	2. Chapter 2

I just recently realized the similarity in my character's name to Mariska Hargitay's mom's name. It's purely coincidental...I had Jay all mapped out and grown years ago and just now learned of Jayne Mansfield. But I thought the coincidence was cute, so I added a little to the character to nod to her accidental namesake, which actually ended up fitting extremely well within her personality. Please, please review!

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"I thought only cats and dogs could be considered feral," Munch was saying as we all sat around on our desks while Huang explained his findings.

"Unfortunately, that's not true. There are rare cases of feral children, usually in poor, sparsely populated countries. The parents abandon the children at a critical developmental age and they subsequently attach to whatever living thing is around them the most. Usually it's dogs. In our little girl's case, it looks like rats."

"So what you're saying is that our little Jane Doe was abandoned by her parents and she was raised by rats? Sounds like a bad movie to me." Cragen shifted his weight and put his hands in his pockets. "And it still doesn't explain her connection to our rape and assault."

"Well, in order to be completely feral, a child would have absolutely no contact with other humans. Obviously that's hard to do in a city as highly populated as this one, so..."

Elliot spoke up. "That bastard was keeping her locked up somewhere."

"It gets better." Munch started while my phone buzzed and I stepped away to answer it. "We ran the name Nicholas or Nick Sheffield, and came out with nothing."

"So he doesn't have a record, great." Elliot said.

"No, he doesn't have anything. No driver's license, no credit card, no bank accounts. So I ran just his social security number, and I got a hit; a death certificate from 1963."

I rejoined the group. "That was the hospital; Jay's mom just got there, she's agreed to let us talk to her."

"Fine, you go talk to her." Cragen said to me. "Don't say anything to the mother about the other little girl until we figure out what the hell is going on here. Huang, if you would go with Olivia, I would like to know what you think of the kid and the mother." George nodded and turned to leave with me while Cragen continued casting roles. "Elliot, I want you, Munch and Fin on the search. We need to figure out who this guy really is."

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Kate Manfield was one of the most striking women I'd seen, and oddly enough, the first time I laid eyes on her I had the fleeting thought that we'd met before. I shook her hand and introduced myself and Dr. Huang.

"Jay's not talking to me," she said after the introductions. Her tall, confident frame mirrored my own, but she was trembling. "I know she hates to be coddled, but, I'm her mother. What else does she expect me to do for her?"

"Kids sometimes have a problem talking to their parents after something like this happens," I said gently. She looked very pale. "Why don't you sit down here by the window and I'll go talk to Jay in the interview room." Kate nodded and Huang pulled up a chair for her as I went into the room.

The moment I walked into the room, Jay tensed up. "Is he dead?" She asked darkly.

"Who?"

"Nick. Did I kill him?"

"No, you didn't kill him," I reassured her. But her eyes were flashing and intense and I wasn't sure she would have been sorry if she had.

"This room is stupid." She picked up a teddy bear and snorted at it, then lazily pitched it aside. "You know just because I'm a kid doesn't mean I'm some sort of imbecile."

"No, I know." I answered. "This is just the room they make us use when we talk to kids under 18."

She was sauntering back and forth through the room, hands stuffed in her pockets, the axis at her shoulders at a constant tilt as she subconsciously compensated for their disproportionate breadth. "Well they need to figure out age isn't always an indicator of maturity."

It was clear to me that I wasn't talking to an average eleven-year-old. "That's for sure," I commented, hoping the light tone in my voice would coax some sort of rapport out of her. She looked at me suddenly and I swear her bright green eyes saw my very soul, but she afforded a hint of a smile before continuing her lazy patrol of the room. Her long fingers curled around a beanbag frog that was on a bookshelf and she studied it as she sat down on the couch. I watched with a strange feeling in my stomach as she leaned forward and braced her elbows on her knees, twirling the toy absent-mindedly in front of her. She was a hopeless tomboy, like her brother had said, and all knees and elbows. I grabbed a chair and sat on it backwards in front of her. I used to do that all the time when I was in high school; I wasn't sure when I had stopped. "Jay," I started, "We're all still very confused about what happened today."

"Seriously?" She flipped her long dark hair back and looked at me incredulously. "I thought it was pretty obvious."

I noted the haughtiness in her voice blazing juxtaposed to the street-smart confidence in her body language. "I need to hear it from you," I urged gently.

She shrugged. There was a world of responsibility on those broad shoulders. "I'm sorry, Detective. I can't give you what you want."

My heart went straight to the concrete. She was protecting him. God damn it. But I wasn't giving up that easily. "How do you know what I want?"

"My dad was a cop," she said condescendingly. "You all always want the same thing."

"The truth," I filled in the blank in case she thought it was something else. She nodded, staring straight into my eyes. If she hadn't been sitting in front of me twirling that stupid frog in her hands, I would have forgotten she was a kid altogether. "Why can't you give me that?"

"Two reasons. One, because my mother is watching on the monitor in the next room, and two, because I have to protect my family."

"That sounds like the same reason to me."

She nodded appreciatively but went on to say, "It's too important to be lumped into one."

I hated myself as I delivered her a low blow. "What about the girl you came in with? Who protects her?" I had to get something - a witness statement or evidence - within the next two hours or that bastard would walk.

Her eyes narrowed and her voice got lower. "That's a cheap shot, Detective." I nodded in acceptance but wouldn't take my expectant gaze off her stoic face. She regarded me for a moment before she said, "You'll need a search warrant."

I nodded again and waited as she got up and went to the little table with the crayons and paper and scrawled an address in the corner of one. Tearing it off and handing it to me, she held it and made me look her in the eye. "If anything happens to us..." She began to warn me, but I cut her off.

I smiled to assure her and said, "I won't let it." She relinquished the scrap but kept her eyebrows raised and her intense eyes fixed on my own. She didn't believe me. The door opened across the room and her older brother came in, smiling. Jay saw him and instantly grinned from ear to ear, called him "Robbie" and ran into his waiting arms. It was the first time I'd seen her look like a normal eleven-year-old girl. I looked on and watched as the two chatted; it was clear they hadn't been together in a while and their excited adoration for eachother left little space in the room for anyone else. For some reason proving myself to her and protecting her became the most important cause in the universe.


	3. Chapter 3

Sorry for the long delay, and THANK YOU to everyone that's tuned in to the story. I tried to make this on a little longer, as per request, but it's still probably not as long as you'd like. I'm having a little writer's block problem with this and with my other story, "well said." which many of you are alerted to as well. Any suggestions on either story are more than welcomed, just send them to me via email. And as always, Please Review!!

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Huang motioned me out of the room, and when I reached him he took me by the arm and turned me out of earshot of the family. "You're not going to like what I just found out."

I sighed. "Tell it to me quick."

He gestured to me to keep walking, "Cragen wants us back at the station."

"That's your bad news?"

"No," he said, holding the door open for me, "According to Kate, Jay has always been much smarter than kids her age. She's never been formally evaluated but I would guess her IQ to hover somewhere around 160-170."

"Yeah it was like talking to a 40 year old in there." I commented as we made our way into an elevator. "What's your point?"

"If the step dad presses charges, she could be easily charged as an adult." He looked at me. "On top of that, her intelligence leaves her frustrated in school and unable to connect to kids her age, which results in frequent violent outbursts. Her mother couldn't count how many times Jay's school called her in the middle of the day because Jay had been fighting."

"Great, so Sheffield has everything he needs to put the blame on her." I jammed my fists into my pockets in frustration, "and without her confession to the abuse, there's nothing to keep her from spending 5-15 in prison." Then I remembered the slip of paper in my hand. "Unless this is her confession." I grabbed my cell out of my coat pocket and flipped it open, quickly thumbing in Alex's number as we reached the parking garage and started the long adventure to the car.

_You've reached A.D.A Alexandra Cabot. I'm not available at the moment but if you would leave your name and number and the nature of your call, I will get back to you as soon as possible. You may reach me during office hours at --_

I hung up and punched in Alex's home number. It didn't even ring. _You've reached A.D.A Alex Cabot --_ Same song and dance. I hung up.

"What's wrong?" Huang's voice beside me startled me a little.

I looked over at him and tried to hide my concern. "Nothing, Alex just isn't answering."

As usual, he heard more than God would in that sentence. We got into the car and he took a breath to speak, but my cell cut him off. I answered it halfway through the first ring.

"Benson." It was Elliot. He had perfect news for the way the day was going. "Wait, who? Great. Yeah we're on our way." I hung up and looked at George. "Guess what?"

"They found out who Sheffield is?"

"No, someone is pressing charges against Jay."

"Not Sheffield?"

"No, some woman. The neighbor across the street." One thing I loved about Huang was that he was comfortable to be silent around. We spent the rest of the car ride in our heads sorting out the information and chasing theories and leads.

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The woman in the interrogation room was a short, barrel-shaped person, with her white hair in a very habitual bun, and dark blue eyes. The name was Mrs. Hall, and she was all rose-print and pearls, complete with gold-rimmed glasses and white gloves. She looked ridiculously like Mrs. Claus during the off-season.

That is, until she opened her mouth.

"That little hellion," she warbled dramatically, "should be locked away!"

"Now, what makes you say that, ma'am?" Elliot asked politely, getting her to drop the volume through the power of suggestion. Old ladies always ate up his good Catholic boy routine.

The old bitty huffed as she sat down. "What doesn't? She vandalizes my house, she torments my grandson, and my dog. You know they used to be friends. Poor child. You know she's always screaming at all hours of the night, breaking things when the mother isn't there -- that drunk -- and that poor man does all he can to keep the family together. I just shuttered to think she'd get away with this again."

There were about a million red flags going up. I sat down and interrupted her tirade. She probably had been in theatre, or still was. "Okay, Mrs. Hall, slow down. Start over. What happened between Jay and your grandson?"

"They used to be friends; when they were about seven or eight. She was a rough girl. They were more like two boys, played ball, wrestled, had practical jokes. I just figured she was, you know, a tom boy. But then one day he comes inside from playing with her and his nose is all bloody and he's...holding himself. Crying."

Elliot jumped in to verify. "Holding himself...you mean his privates?" I didn't know how he could always guess what pseudonym to use that would offend each person the least.

She nodded. "That little monster had kicked him there, broken his nose and knocked out a tooth. At eight years old? And a girl. I knew there was something wrong with her."

Elliot caught my sidelong glance and then turned his Irish eyes on the old woman. "Okay, did you see what happened before that?"

"No, but he told me."

"What did he tell you?" I asked quietly. Women like her always expected younger women to be soft-spoken and polite towards her.

She didn't like me. I think it was my hair. But she answered anyway. "He said that they had been wrestling, for fun, and when he won, she went crazy and started beating the snot out of him."

I looked at Elliot pointedly, and he, again, caught it and then quickly turned back to Mrs. Hall. "That was the only time that had happened?"

"That was the only time he'd won." She tilted her head almost apologetically and shrugged, explaining, "Greg was always athletic, but he was skinny. Too busy running around to sit down long enough to eat a good meal. Jay grew up with brothers, ate like they did. She easily overpowered him."

"And the vandalism?" I asked.

"It started shortly after. I told Greg he wasn't allowed to play with her anymore, and she threw an apple through the front window when she found out. And now our Halloween pumpkins get smashed every year."

Elliot jumped in. "Mrs. Hall, did it ever occur to you that Mr. Sheffield might be abusing Jay?"

"What, Nicholas? No way. He's such a charming young man, and he loves those kids as if they were his own. Adopted them outright after the marriage."

"Ma'am," I said, "The doctor found signs of prolonged sexual abuse on Jay. Sheffield raped her."

"No, no." She looked shocked, but I think she counted my "mistake" to inexperience. She patted my hand condescendingly and it made my stomach turn. "Impossible. He would never do a thing like that. He teaches Sunday School."

It was Elliot's turn to shoot me a look, which I was expecting. "What church?" I asked.

"Holy Grace Evangelical." She smiled, "Everyone loves him there. Jay never goes to church."

Cragen came in, then. "Mrs. Hall, thank you for coming down. We'll call you if we need any more information." He ushered her politely out of the interview room, then handed her off to a uniform escort to get her out of the precinct. It was obvious it made her feel very important.

Elliot and I had our coats on, but Cragen returned from the doorway and gestured for us to turn around. "Elliot, Liv, hang around. We need you in the bullpen."

"Captain," I protested, "I've got to go track down Alex for a warrant on this..." I was pulling the scrap of paper out of my pocked when he cut me off.

"Alex isn't available. D.A.'s office called to tell me she'd taken a week leave to deal with some family business out of state. They sent us Mr. Steel here in her stead."

I hadn't noticed the man until Cragen nodded to him, even though he'd been standing right there the whole time. I swallowed back something - not sure if it was hate or vomit - and nodded at Mr. Steel. Jim Steel. His eyes matched his name. It was the first time I'd met him, but I knew him from stories Alex would tell me after one or two glasses of scotch, and based on that, I wanted to hit him. Jim Steel was Alex's "angry sex" guy, as she called him. She'd come back from encounters with him with tender bruises and a dull, empty smile. Alex told herself (and me) that he was a wild indulgence, a stress relief, that it empowered her, but I knew better. She was a cutter, and Jim was her razor. He was to her what alcohol was to my mother. He flashed a polite smile that lit up his cold eyes and probably would have made someone else feel weak in the knees. Someone who hadn't been fucked by Alexandra Cabot. And that thought made me feel both proud and extremely foolish. Where the hell was she?


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